While politicians continue to haggle over reform, the U.S. government deports people who have American children, sending mothers over the border and their children into foster homes—sometimes for good

Karla Gonzalez didn't think anything of the sounds of car doors closing or the voices outside her bedroom window when they woke her at 4:30 one November morning. She'd recently started renting a one-story home in a quiet, if modest, subdivision of Glendale, Arizona, a neighborhood where she didn't have to worry about the meaning of middle-of-the-night noises. But she couldn't fall back asleep, so she cleaned her kitchen before waking her 14-year-old son, Cruz, for school. As he showered, Karla, 39, dressed for work as a manager at a Phoenix store that sells candles and natural health remedies, letting Merlly, her two-year-old daughter, sleep until Karla was ready. The family had a quick breakfast before piling into her Chevy Tahoe. She was backing out of the garage when a loud voice stopped her: "Karla Gonzalez, this is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

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Through her rearview mirror, she saw at least four SUVs and a dozen agents, guns hanging from their hips. It was the agents she'd heard outside, she realized; they'd been waiting for her to emerge. My God, she thought, there is nothing I can do.

For more than a year, Karla had been fighting deportation in federal immigration court after living in the United States without papers since she was 12, when her mother brought her to Phoenix from Mexico City. In 2010, local police arrested her for failing to pay some $700 in traffic tickets that she'd racked up over the past few years. When they discovered her status, they handed her over to federal immigration officials. But because she was a single mother whose only offense was the handful of tickets, she was allowed to remain in Arizona while she contested her deportation. About a year into the proceedings, in August 2011, she missed a court-mandated appointment before a judge and was ordered deported in absentia. Karla could now be removed from the country at any moment, even though her legal challenge was still pending. On November 3, her time ran out.

"I have kids. What will happen to my kids?" she pleaded with an immigration officer.

"Is there anyone who can take them?" he asked.

She called a friend, the one person she thought might help, but she didn't answer. Karla had been wary of getting too close to people, especially after Arizona passed a law in 2010 making it a state crime to be undocumented. Her mother, the only relative she'd ever had in the U.S., had died years earlier, and Karla had no contact with her children's fathers.

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The officer ordered Karla to wait in the back of one of the SUVs. She could hear Merlly crying outside. "Let me see her," Karla begged an agent. In response, he turned on the radio. A Phoenix rock station blasted out the sound of her daughter's sobs.

An hour and a half later, an officer let Karla out. Her car was still parked in the driveway, Cruz and Merlly still inside. A beige van had pulled up behind it. A woman who introduced herself as a Child Protective Services (CPS) worker handed Karla a document titled AVISO DE CUSTODIA TEMPORAL—notice of temporary custody. In Spanish, it read, "No person in charge present and the child can not take care of him/herself or of the other children in the home." Temporary custody, Karla thought, momentarily relieved. The woman handed her another sheet with a phone number at the state's child welfare agency, then led Cruz, carrying Merlly, into the van. They drove away, without letting Karla say goodbye.

In the past five years, the Obama administration has carried out nearly 2 million deportations, and between July 2010 and September 2012 approximately 205,000 of those were of parents whose children, born here, were U.S. citizens, according to federal data obtained by Colorlines.com, a news site focused on race. In some cases, the families have been reunited, thanks to relatives who pack the children onto planes and buses bound for the parents' native country; in others, the children have remained in the U.S., living with a friend or extended family. At least 5,000 children at any given time are stuck in the custody of state child welfare agencies, however, sometimes for months or years, based on estimates by the Applied Research Center, a national racial justice think tank.

The more-than-1,000-page immigration overhaul legislation that the Senate passed in June—and whose prospects in the House were unclear as of mid-July—promises a pathway to citizenship for some of the roughly 11 million people living in the U.S. without papers. Two thirds have been here for more than a decade, time enough to establish homes and families, even businesses. The bill would provide them with a legal status that reflects their rootedness in the United States, and it would also allow deportees with American kids (or spouses or parents) who would themselves have been eligible for citizenship under the proposed legislation's criteria—deportees like Karla, in other words—to apply to return.

Courtesy of Karla Gonzalez

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After being held briefly at a holding facility somewhere between Phoenix and the Mexican border, Karla was cuffed and loaded onto a bus with some dozen other deportees. At Nogales, Arizona, once a contiguous community on both sides of the border that is now partly divided by the wall the U.S. government has built to separate it from its southern neighbor, everyone was ordered out of the bus and, in the predawn darkness, herded through a gate into Nogales, Mexico.

Meanwhile, Cruz had reluctantly deposited Merlly in foster care at the suburban home of Gloria and Robert, a couple who'd retired to Phoenix to be near their grandson, and who asked that their last name not be used. "It was evening," recalls Gloria, "and they had her brother bring her in with CPS. They said he was her primary caretaker. I asked if he could tell me anything about his sister, and he answered all of my questions. That's all we knew."

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As the caseworker drove Cruz across the city to a group home, Gloria and Robert sat on the couch with Merlly and tried to calm her, knowing that she couldn't understand much English but hoping that the tone of their voices might soothe her.

In Mexico, Karla was taken to a crowded shelter (Nogales received nearly 55,000 deportees from the U.S. in 2011, the year Karla was deported) and assigned a bunk bed. "I was totally destroyed," she tells me when we meet, four months after her forced relocation. "I felt like a piece of trash on the ground." All she'd been able to take with her was her wallet, which contained a few dollars; some business cards; and Merlly's vaccination record. She kept seeing the little girl's anguished face, imagining her terror at watching her mother being spirited away.

After three days at the shelter, Karla saw Mexican consular officials on one of their biweekly visits, and she begged them for help but was told that because her children were U.S. citizens, there was nothing they could do. Someone did lend her a phone to call the CPS number she'd been given, but she got an answering machine. When the officials came back days later, she tried again. Another message.

For the next three weeks, Karla was unable to reach anyone about her children's fate. During that time a legal case began over whether she'd neglected her children, based, according to documents submitted by CPS to a Phoenix judge, on her deportation. The "mother neglected her children by not providing the care and supervision.... The mother knew that [she] probably would be deported but did not take the necessary measures so that other people will take care of their children."

On one level, Karla said she always knew she could be thrown out of the country, but she didn't seem to believe it really would happen. Mexico may be her birthplace, but she has virtually no memories of it. She's from Phoenix, she says. She and her mother crossed the border in a car with five other people in 1985 and made their way to the city, where they picked onions and potatoes for $3 a day. She had no time for school, but an elderly trilingual Chinese-American man taught her to read and write in English after their shifts busing tables at a Chinese restaurant. As an adult, she hoped motherhood would rescue her from a life of menial labor, but her romantic relationships were fraught—Cruz's father beat her, she says, and Merlly's abandoned her. Nonetheless, through sheer force of will she cobbled together a decent life for her children. She'd found the place in Glendale and risen up from retail clerk to manager, which for the first time in her life gave her some control over her job. For instance, it meant Merlly could spend the day with her at the store. When she dropped off Cruz at school and chatted with other parents and teachers, she was proud that no one suspected just how poor the family was or that she was undocumented.

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Karla didn't see a way out of her situation. "I could not afford a lawyer [to fight deportation] and also keep paying for gas and water and school and food for my kids," she says, her accent still thick despite her 27 years in the United States. And, she adds, how could she have taken her children to Mexico? She had no family there, no job—and her children, Cruz especially, were American through and through. "My son wants to join the military. You know why? Because he says that he wants to defend the U.S." She sounds equal parts stunned and bitter.

Karla's first break came when Hannah Hafter, a 29-year-old with a master's degree in public health from the University of Arizona, showed up at the shelter. A volunteer for No More Deaths, a humanitarian group that helps border crossers, Hafter came bearing phones for deportees like Karla. After Karla poured out her story, Hafter put her in touch with Laurie Melrood, an immigration activist and former administrator in Arizona's juvenile court system.

Just a few days later, Karla stood in a gravel yard near the border, holding a slip of paper with the phone numbers of her children's foster homes that Melrood had helped her track down. She was in line with a score of others, most of them men, their clothes still coated with desert dust from their failed attempt to cross the border, all waiting to use one of the phones brought in by No More Deaths. When her turn came, Karla dialed Gloria's number. Karla could hear Gloria tell Merlly, "This is your mother." "Mamá?" the little girl said into the phone. Overcome with relief, Karla could barely answer.

During the call, Hafter says, "Karla just cried and cried and cried. It was like you could see this darkness lift off of her." From that day on, Karla called her kids almost every day.

Her next task was to get them back. With Hafter's help, she got her marching orders from Arizona CPS: She'd have to take parenting and domestic-violence classes, get a test for cocaine and meth, and submit to an inspection of her home. The overwhelmed child-welfare agency tends to use a one-size-fits-all approach, Melrood said, and like it or not, Karla was in the position of having to prove she wasn't an abusive parent. (In an e-mail, an Arizona Division of Children, Youth, and Families spokesperson said that when a child of deported parents is placed in foster care, "there are specific legal requirements that must be undertaken" before the two can be reunited.)

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Karla got a job that paid $125 a week at a taco joint, rented a small apartment near the border, and bought a cell phone. She had phone numbers both for the court-appointed attorney assigned to represent her in the custody case and for a pro bono lawyer Hafter enlisted to contest her deportation. From this second lawyer, Karla learned an incredible fact: She probably could have avoided deportation in the first place. By U.S. law, undocumented immigrants who've been the victim of violent crimes committed by U.S. citizens can petition to stay in the country. When Karla was in her late twenties, she was raped by strangers. A police record of the assault exists, her lawyer said, which would've made her case relatively straightforward.

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Now, however, a crime-victim visa, if even granted, would take more than a year to obtain, and Melrood warned her that she couldn't wait that long to get Merlly; in Arizona children under three can be put up for adoption after six months in foster care. Lorena Morrow Celis, a U.S.-trained attorney practicing in Mexico City, said she's handling two such cases now: "We're seeing parental rights terminated, where parents are trying to do whatever they can, but they can't get back [to the U.S.] to attend a hearing."

To take the required classes, Karla reported to the Mexican national child welfare bureau but was told she couldn't enroll without a referral from the agency's Arizona counterpart—until Melrood personally arranged the services. With the help of the Mexican consulate, Karla got a drug test and sent the results to Phoenix; CPS soon told her, however, that it was the wrong one. The agency next informed her that her home didn't meet department standards because she didn't have a refrigerator.

By the time I first met Karla in March 2012, she'd gotten a second job, at a nail salon, and saved enough to buy a small refrigerator. As we talked, we sat on opposite ends of her single bed, a stuffed Snoopy hanging from its wooden frame. The bed and a small TV, its cord snaking across the floor to the outlet in the bathroom, were the only furniture in the one-room apartment. She'd sent in the results of another drug test and was seeing a counselor at the Mexican child welfare bureau, the best she could do for parenting classes.

Karla told me she'd spoken to Merlly on the phone just before I arrived, but now she dialed Gloria's number again.

"What's the matter?" Gloria answered, over speakerphone.

"Can I talk to Merlly one second?" Karla replied, clutching the phone to her mouth, as if perhaps that might bring her a bit closer to her daughter. "Qué pasa, mi amor?" she said, then switched to English, in case the girl no longer understood Spanish. "What you doing, Merlly? I love you, Merlly. I love you."

"Mamá," the little girl said again and again, then, seeming confused, hung up.

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Karla set the phone down on the bed without a word. It was okay, she told me. She'd achieved her goal: She'd felt a surge of fear that her two- year-old would forget her voice. Merlly had been reminded, for now, anyway.

Karla was particularly on edge because a couple of days earlier what Melrood had feared seemed to be coming true. According to Cruz, Merlly was going to be adopted. The caseworker had told him so, he said. "We won't let that happen," a panicked Karla tried to reassure him, not to mention herself.

In truth, sitting in her barren room, Karla seemed defeated. She'd begun to question what kind of life her children could have here in Nogales, she said. She'd narrowly avoided being robbed—or possibly worse—when two men jumped out of a car and tried to pull her inside. She was barely making enough to pay rent, and because she didn't have a Mexican identification card, it was a struggle just to keep a job. Karla knew Gloria and Robert treated Merlly well. They took her to church and swam with her in their pool. Merlly played with their other foster child, a younger boy whom she started to refer to as her brother. The longer Merlly was with them, the more attached she became to the couple, Karla lamented.

It was Cruz who strengthened Karla's resolve to get Merlly back. One day in March, Karla asked him what he wanted for himself. He was turning 16 soon, he said; in two years, he'd be independent, and he didn't want to leave the U.S. "I don't have anything for him here," Karla said. "In this life we don't live just for love or for family. We live for money, well-being, and health. You can't live just on the love of your mother." About his sister, however, the boy was adamant: "Over my dead body she'll be adopted," he said. It was part teenage bravado, but Cruz also had become his mother and sister's advocate, a responsible grown-up. He spoke often with his lawyer and caseworker; CPS had failed to arrange time for the two siblings to meet, but after Cruz complained to the judge, he and Merlly had started spending at least a few hours together each week.

When Melrood visited Karla in the fall, however, she found Karla's determination wavering. Karla was trying to prove she was a "good mother," but who knew whether her efforts were bearing fruit, since she received virtually no information from the court. "Karla's spirits were blown, her anxieties high," Melrood recalled. "She told me that her daughter didn't recognize her as her mother when they talked on the phone. There were times when she said maybe her child should stay with her foster mom."

In early January 2013, more than 14 months after Karla's deportation, she called in to yet another court hearing and listened as the judge said she was almost ready to make her decision. Both sides should file petitions on the question of whether Karla's parental rights should be terminated. Karla felt sick. "Merlly's my whole life," she said mournfully over the phone.

Karla waited one week, then two. "It honestly isn't looking so good," Hafter cautioned. Then, on January 23, an official from the Mexican consulate called Karla and told her to be at the border checkpoint at 11 a.m. the next day to pick up her daughter. In the morning, she waited, shivering in the cold. Eleven o'clock passed, then noon. Finally, a consulate car from the U.S. approached the checkpoint, and Karla began to weep. A woman emerged from the car with Merlly, dressed in a pink jacket, her brown hair in pigtails, and placed her in her mother's arms. Merlly, now three years old, was stiff, scared. Who was this woman? "Merlly, I love you," Karla said, and the little girl seemed to relax a bit at the familiar voice, the voice from the calls. But two weeks after her arrival in Nogales, Merlly told her mom, "I don't know who you are, but I know that you are nice to me, so I'm going to be nice to you."

Five months later, Karla and her daughter are eating lunch in Leo's restaurant, a stone's throw from the border crossing. Merlly nibbles on a hamburger and then gets up to look at the birds in cages at the back of the room. Laughing, she runs back to Karla, and jumps onto her lap. "Quiero water," she says. She's relearning Spanish. When Karla hands her a cup, Merlly says, "Yucky agua." She calls warm water agua; cold is water. She wants Karla to put on her sunglasses. "Not right now," Karla tells her, but Merlly keeps pestering. Finally, Karla puts them on, upside down. Merlly squeals.

Karla still talks to Cruz every day. He's finishing high school and hopes he'll be allowed to live on his own, and when he's 18, Karla says, he'll be able to visit her.

In Arizona, a committee of judges, child welfare officials, Mexican consular representatives, and U.S. immigration authorities this year designed a protocol to help keep lines of communication open between children and parents detained in the United States (though that really wouldn't have helped Karla, since she'd been shipped to Mexico). Last year, California passed a law with a similar intent. It's a start.

As for Karla, Merlly came over the international line without a passport, just a copy of her birth certificate, so in Mexico she's essentially stateless. As a result, for instance, she couldn't get a dental procedure this summer through the Mexican national health system. Hafter offered to take the girl across the border, but then realized that without a passport Merlly couldn't actually enter her home country. In effect, Karla says, the U.S. government has deported one of its own citizens to Mexico.

In the restaurant, Merlly asks Karla if she can talk to "Grandma." Karla pulls a cell phone from her pocket and dials Gloria. She and Robert have already made the three-hour drive from Phoenix twice to visit her. When they left, Merlly sobbed and screamed and begged them to stay. "It was so sad, the way that the system worked to send her back to Nogales," Gloria says. "I know they sent her to her mother. But the living conditions there are really not the greatest. I worry she won't have the opportunities she'd have here."

Of course, this isn't the life Karla wants for her daughter. She's hoping the petition for her visa will come through sometime next year or, who knows, maybe Congress will pass the long-awaited immigration reform and she'll be able to apply to return that way. She wants to be back in Phoenix, with both of her children. She wants to go home.